


Somewhere Else

by Pseudo_Nym



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, I'm Bad At Tagging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 14:19:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11853360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pseudo_Nym/pseuds/Pseudo_Nym
Summary: Once, when he thought they were asleep, he leaned in to straighten their blanket. His eyes were wet, his smile was strained, and he distantly heard himself say, “I love you.” He hadn’t meant to say it; the words just slipped out, as simple as breathing.





	Somewhere Else

**Author's Note:**

> Be warned, my friends: read too much fanfiction, and you too shall be cursed to create your own.

Once, when he thought they were asleep, he leaned in to straighten their blanket. His eyes were wet, his smile was strained, and he distantly heard himself say, “I love you.” He hadn’t meant to say it; the words just slipped out, as simple as breathing.

Of course, they rolled right over to look at him. They’d always been a light sleeper, even before they’d… gotten sick. It used to worry him, how they’d flinch awake at the slightest sound. These days he had worse problems. His best friend was dying, and he was lying to his parents about why. The world, it seemed, held less colour with every passing hour. The weight of his secrets and his sins haunted him every time he closed his eyes. And yet, impossibly, even those troubles were for the moment eclipsed by the way they were looking at him, and by the way his heart was tearing a path out of his chest.

“What was that, Asriel.” Their tone was light, but just a little too flat, and their gaze was a touch too intense for his liking. Beyond that, their face was unreadable, even to Asriel, who knew it better than his own. His paw pads started to sweat, and his breathing got funny for a moment.

He stammered. He took a half step back. He tried, desperately, to think of a lie. But because, deep down, he was brave enough to be honest and strong enough to be kind, he made a choice.

“I said I love you, Chara.” The words hung heavy in the air, awaiting judgement.

“Oh. That’s… good.” They hesitated a moment. Then they rolled to face the wall again. “Go back to sleep, Asriel.”

He should have been relieved that he’d gotten away so easily. For some reason, he wasn’t. He frowned. “I-I mean it, Chara! I love you. I really love you!”

“I heard you fine the first time.” They continued to study the wall. “There was no need to repeat yourself.”

“Some things are worth repeating.” He was gaining steam now, finding a confidence he didn’t know he had. Or maybe he was just being stubborn. He had never won an argument with Chara, not once, but that rarely stopped him from trying. “I love you, Chara. I want to tell you that every day. I’d tell you twice an hour, if I thought it’d make you believe it.”

“You think I don’t believe it.”

“I know you don’t! If you did, you wouldn’t be… taking yourself away.”

A peculiar expression flickered briefly on their face, and they let out a breath they didn’t know they were holding. This, at least, was familiar ground. It was a conversation they’d had so many times before, in different ways, that they knew just which strings to pull to make it dance. So they turned to face him, suddenly calm, suddenly serene. “I’m not going anywhere, Asriel,” they said, softly. “We’ll still be together. We’ll be closer than ever, hearts beating as one. And it’ll be forever, Asriel, forever, not just the seven or eight decades my human body can hold out. I want that. Don’t you?”

“We don’t know what’ll happen!” His voice cracked, a little, but he didn’t slow down. “We can’t know what it’ll be like! And, and even if everything works out perfectly, I… I won’t be able to see your face again. I won’t be able to see you smile or hear you laugh or hold your hand. I don’t want to let go of that, Chara. I… I c-can’t…”

They took his hand and gently stroked the back of it. He relaxed, just a hair. “I know it’s scary, Asriel,” they cooed. “I’m scared, too. But we’re not doing this for us, not only. We’re doing it for everyone. For everyone you’ve ever met, and for everyone in the kingdom you haven’t. They need their freedom. They deserve their freedom. Would you deny it to them?”

“N-no, but--”

“But nothing. A good king puts his people first. Don’t you want to be a good king?”

“I want you, Chara. Nothing else.” He moved his lips to say more, but no sound came out. Eventually, he found his voice. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, anymore. Not anyone. Not even you.”

Chara frowned. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. “Don’t be selfish, Asriel. Your people need this.”

“To hell with them!” He flinched, and glanced at the door. So did Chara, despite themselves. Toriel had a keen ear for even the mildest of swears. But nobody came, and soon he regathered his resolve. “To hell with them,” he said again, very seriously, if a little quieter. “If they want you dead, they can storm the castle and kill you themselves. But they’ll have to get through me, first.” He puffed out his chest, just a bit.

Chara started to sweat. “Y-you’re joking, right? We can’t stop now. We’ve come too far.” Asriel shook his head. “Seriously? You’re just going to leave me like this? Broken and bloody and trapped in a body I despise?”

“I’m not going to leave you, Chara. Not ever. But I’m not going to kill you, either.”

They glared knives, and snarled. “I get it,” they sneered. “You want to go back. Back to the way things were. Well, you can’t.” Suddenly, they smiled. A little too suddenly, and a little too broad, because the sores on their lips started to crack and bleed. Blood trickled into their mouth, staining their teeth. Their eyes stayed wide, even as red tears painted their cheeks. “You did this to me, Asriel. You brought me the flowers. You helped me keep them a secret. You held my hand every step of the way. You carried everything right to its edge, and now you can’t accept the consequences. You make me sick.” They laughed, a slightly burbling sound because of the blisters in their throat. “You literally make me sick.” It was so funny, they couldn’t stop laughing.

Asriel helped them sit up a little more, so the blood wouldn’t pool, and wiped their face clean with a nearby towel. They didn’t resist. Then he sat down on the floor next to their bed. For a while, he said nothing. But then, because some things are worth repeating, he said, “I love you, Chara.” And for a minute that felt like a day, the room was silent.

Then they sighed, and turned to stare up at the ceiling. When they spoke, it was with more loss than a child’s voice should hold. “Don’t you get it, Asriel? They took everything from you. Everything. They stole the sky from you. You can’t _imagine_ how big the sky is, or how blue. They stole the song of the wind in the autumn trees, and the way the light dances through falling snow. They stole the coolness of a spring breeze, the warmth of the summer sun on tired shoulders, the smell of the earth after the rain. They stole the stars, Asriel. All you’ve got are a few shiny rocks. They’ve got so, so much, and all you get is their garbage. The broken, worthless things they’ve thrown away. And the broken, worthless people.” They sighed again. “They took everything. And I have a chance to give it back. At a bargain price, too. Please, Asriel. I want to do this. Let me give you the world.”

“I’d rather have you, Chara. I mean that.”

“You haven’t seen the world.”

“No, but Mom and Dad have. And Gerson. And a few other old folks. None of them are trying to kill you. None of them are asking you to kill yourself.”

“They want me dead, though. They’re just too weak to do it themselves.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

“…No, I don’t.” They closed their eyes. “Monsters are weird. I’ll never get why you’re all so nice to me.”

“Because we love you.”

“…Maybe.” They fidgeted. “Are you… are you sure you won’t kill me? The world out there is really beautiful.”

“You’re really beautiful.”

They laughed again, but something was different. A little less blood, a little more mirth. A little more childhood. “Stop being gross, Azzy.”

“Never. I’ll always be gross and you’ll always be beautiful.”

They frowned. And then, slowly, they smiled. A small, shy smile, but something real. “I guess… I can live with that.”

And they all lived happily ever after.

 

 

 

He screamed. That’s exactly how it would have happened, he was sure. That’s exactly how it did happen, somewhere. He smashed the photo and fired a ring of bullets at the lamp in the corner. _Somewhere else._ He pulled the wardrobe over and gave his best sneer at all the striped shirts that fell out. _Somewhere he’d been strong._ With one rippling vine, he broke his old bed to splinters. _Somewhere he’d deserved them._ He sent a second vine towards the other bed, but it stopped short, barely touching the sheets. He looked down at the photo. A shard of broken glass reflected his tear-stained face, so that in a single glimpse he saw both his past and present, both who he really was and some terrifying stranger. He wondered which was which.

Why couldn’t it have happened that way? And why couldn’t he go back and change it? He could change everything else, but he couldn’t reach the things that mattered. The person that mattered. He could only go back to the garden. The time before was gone. He never thought of those days as ‘before he was a flower,’ or ‘before he lost his body.’ Only as ‘before he lost them.’ He loved them. Why hadn’t he said so?

 

 

 

He knew, of course. It was because, when push came to shove, he’d stammered. He’d taken a half step back. He’d tried, desperately, to think of a lie. And then because, deep down, he was cruel enough to let them suffer and weak enough to do what he knew was wrong, he’d made a choice.

“I said I trust you, Chara.” The words had hung heavy in the air, awaiting judgement.

“Oh. That’s… good.” They’d hesitated a moment. And then they’d rolled to face the wall again. “Go back to sleep, Asriel.”

“Y-yeah. Goodnight, Chara.”

“Goodnight, Asriel.”

 

Four days later, they were both dead.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to write a happy story, so I sat at my keyboard, and this is what came out. Clearly, it's a defective keyboard.


End file.
